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"This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!" - Donald Trump, in a string of unhinged election night tweets on his Twitter page

I never thought I'd say this, but The Donald was right.

Not about Tuesday's election, of course. Or this being a democracy. Votes were cast and counted. One guy got more votes than the other guy. The guy with more votes won. That's pretty much the essence of democracy. What really set off the blustering billionaire was that he had no choice but to accept that there are still some things money can't buy.

In a later tweet, Mr. Trump blasted Karl Rove, Tuesday night's biggest loser. The hard right's chief electoral firebomber burned through about $176 million in TV and radio ads and rewarded his investors with a combined success rate of 14 percent.

As the Obama Appreciation Society was whooping it up over at MSNBC, the slate of long faces at Fox's "America's Election HQ" was as chalky as a limestone quarry at dusk. The lone holdout was a smoldering Mr. Rove, who insisted Ohio could still roll red, but the only province in which the Romney campaign still had life was the State of Denial.

"Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle," Mr. Trump tweeted. "Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money."

Mr. Trump was wrong on the amount, but right in calling Mr. Rove's failed attempt to buy America a waste of money. More than $6 billion was spent this election cycle, the most expensive ever and the first since the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision, which gave birth to massive political money-laundering operations like Mr. Rove's American Crossroads.

Money has always been used to influence American elections, but Citizens United threatened to make our democracy just one more commodity available only to the super rich.

The Obama and Romney campaigns each spent about $1 billion, an obscene outlay for a job that pays $400,000 a year. Fading New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez makes that every nine at-bats. At his $29 million salary, each of "A-Rod's" 126 hits in 2012 cost his employers more than $230,000. In the playoffs, he was benched in favor of a pinch-hitter making $1.1 million a year.

Pennsylvania was largely a bystander in the presidential race until the final week, when we were carpet-bombed with negative ads, mostly painting Mr. Obama and every other Democratic candidate as the greatest threats to America since Castro, John Lennon and fluoridated water.

It didn't work. Pennsylvanians know what desperation looks like. It's a way of life here. The ads were just expensive white noise. It was all over but the voting.

Tea party millionaire Tom Smith spent about $17 million of his own money attacking incumbent U.S. Sen. "Bawb" Casey and "Barawk O'bawma," and lost by about 400,000 votes.

Tea party billionaires didn't do any better. Las Vegas casino king Sheldon Adelman put more than $60 million behind eight candidates. All of them lost.

Supporters of Citizens United point to the widespread failures of big money to decide races across the country as evidence the decision isn't the threat to democracy its detractors claim. Time will tell, but one election cycle is hardly a reliable yardstick. The interests who failed to capitalize this time around are likely to spend more, not less, in the future.

What we can all agree on right now is that the $6 billion spent barely moving the American electorate from where it was four years ago could have been put to far better use.

Calculated using the average costs of the following items, that $6 billion could have:

$ Provided four-year college educations for 92,307 Americans

$ Built 400 new public schools

$ Bought 11.7 million laptops for elementary school students

$ Bought 80,000 new school buses

$ Hired 138,363 new teachers

$ Provided 2.4 billion school lunches

$ Rescued 79,318 homeowners with underwater mortgages

$ Paid for a year of health insurance for 381,000 families of four

$ Provided a year of daycare for 818,000 children

$ Paid for a year of elder care for more than 1 million Americans

$ Paid for two years of health care for all veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

$ Paved 1,200 miles of highways

$ Paid off Pennsylvania's $162 million 2012 deficit 37 times over

$ Paid off Scranton's projected 2013 deficit of $20 million 300 times over

$ Provided each of the 313 million Americans a crisp, clean $20 bill

$ Provided each resident of Lackawanna County $28,000

$ Provided each resident of Scranton $79,000

$ Provided 857 million meals from Meals on Wheels

$ Provided 2.4 million meals at soup kitchens

$ Granted 800,000 "Make-a-Wish" wishes

$ Met the United Way of Lackawanna and Wayne Counties 2012 fundraising goal 3.5 million more than 1,700 times over

I could fill this newspaper with more examples of how that $6 billion could have been better spent, but these should suffice to make the point. Ink is expensive. No sense wasting it.

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